My sliding chariot stays, Thick set with agate, and the azure sheen 'Goddess dear, SPIRIT. We implore thy powerful hand Through the force, and through the wile, SABRINA. Shepherd, 'tis my office best Next this marble venomed seat, Smeared with gums of glutinous heat, I touch with chaste palms moist and cold: Now the spell hath lost his hold; And I must haste, ere morning hour, To wait in Amphitrite's bower. [SABRINA descends, and the LADY rises out of her seat.] SPIRIT. Virgin, daughter of Locrine, Sprung of old Anchises' line,' May thy brimméd2 waves for this Their full tribute never miss 1 For Locrine was the son of Brutus, who was the son of Silvius, he of Ascanius, and Ascanius of Æneas, the son of Anchises. 2 i. e. swelling, rising to the brim. hills: From a thousand petty rills, Lest the sorcerer us entice His wished presence, and, beside, Will double all their mirth and cheer. But night sits monarch yet in the mid sky [The Scene changes, presenting Ludlow town and the PRESIDENT's castle; then come in country dancers; after them the ATTENDANT SPIRIT, with the two BROTHERS and the LADY.] Song. SPIRIT. Back, shepherds, back! enough your play, 1 Banks is the nominative case, as head was in the last line but one. The sense and syntax of the whole is, may thy head be crowned round about with towers, &c., and here and there [may] thy banks [be crowned] upon with groves, &c.-ÉTIOTέpoiVTO σoi ai oxoai. The phrase is Greek.-Calton. Here be, without duck or nod, Other trippings to be trod Of lighter toes, and such court guise On the lawns, and on the leas.1 [This second Song presents them to their Father and Mother.] Noble lord, and lady bright, I have brought ye new delight; To triumph in victorious dance O'er sensual folly and intemperance. [The dances ended, the SPIRIT epiloguises.] SPIRIT. To the ocean now I fly,2 And those happy climes that lie Of Hesperus, and his daughters three, About the cedarn alleys fling Nard and cassia's balmy smells. Waters the odorous banks, that blow 1 Pastures, corn-fields. 2 A paraphrase of Ariel's song in the "Tempest:' "Where the bee sucks, there lurk I." Flowers of more mingled hue Quickly to the green earth's end, Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend, To the corners of the moon. Mortals, that would follow me, Heaven itself would stoop to her.3 1 Flourished, embroided with the needle. 2 Venus, so called, because she was first worshipped by the Assyrians. 3" Comus," observes Hallam, "was sufficient to convince any one of taste and feeling, that a great poet had arisen in England, and one partly formed in a different school from his contemporaries. Many of them had produced highly beautiful and imaginative passages; but none had evinced so classical a judgment, none had aspired to so regular a perfection. Jonson had learned much from the ancients, but there was a grace in their best models which he did not quite attain. Neither his 'Sad Shepherd,' nor the 'Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher, have the elegance or dignity of 'Comus.' A noble virgin and her young brothers, by whom this masque was originally represented, required an elevation, a purity, a sort of severity of sentiment which no one in that age could have given but Milton. He avoided, and nothing loth, the more festive notes which dramatic poetry was XVII LYCIDAS.1 [In this monody the author bewails a learned friend, Mr. Edward King, who was unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish seas, 1637, and by occasion foretels the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their height.] YET once more, O ye laurels! and once more I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. wont to mingle with its serious strain. But for this he was compensated by the brightest hues of fancy, and the sweetest melody of song. In 'Comus' we find nothing prosaic or feeble, no false taste in the incidents, and not much in the language, nothing over which we should desire to pass on a second perusal. The want of what we may call personality, none of the characters having names, except Comus himself, who is a very indefinite being, and the absence of all positive attributes of time and place, enhance the ideality of the fiction by a certain indistinctness not unpleasing to the imagination." 1 "It has been said, I think very fairly, that Lycidas is a good test of real feeling for what is peculiarly called poetry. Many, or perhaps we might say most readers, do not taste its excellence; nor does it follow that they may not greatly admire Pope and Dryden, or even Virgil and Homer. It is, however, somewhat remarkable, that John. son, who has committed his critical reputation by the most contemptuous depreciation of this poem, had, in an earlier part of his life, selected the tenth Eclogue of Virgil for peculiar praise; the tenth Eclogue, which, beautiful as it is, belongs to the same class of pastoral |